Reports of Secret U.S. Prisons in Europe Draw Ire and Otherwise Red Faces

By IAN FISHER; Reporting for this article was contributed by Stephen Grey in Johannesburg; Alan Cowell in London; Richard Bernstein in Berlin; Renwick McLean in Barcelona, Spain; Nicholas Wood in Ljubljana, Slovenia; and Brian Wingfield in Rome.

Published: December 1, 2005

It is not only anger that is rising in Europe over possible secret American prisons on the Continent, kidnappings of terror suspects and transfers of prisoners on C.I.A. airplanes.

There is also looming embarrassment, with suspicion that Americans, in many cases, operated with the knowledge or consent of local governments.

''Someone knew,'' said Daria Pesce, the lawyer for a former C.I.A. station chief in Milan, one of 22 Americans formally charged in the kidnapping of an Islamic militant from there to Egypt in 2003. ''I don't think that it is possible that an American comes into Italy and kidnaps someone. It seems really unlikely.''

In the last few weeks, a confusing -- and combustible -- array of allegations has been hardening into fact in the European mind, all pointing to a worry that people here, largely skeptical of America's effort to prevent terrorism, may be more involved in that project than thought, and in several ways.

The immediate furor was set off by a report that since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the Central Intelligence Agency has created a covert prison system in eight countries, including several in Eastern Europe. There have been subsequent reports that C.I.A. planes have made stops in various European countries.

The flights have raised questions of whether they carried suspects bound for secret American prisons, though the flights do not prove that such transfers took place.

The concern is not limited to covert prisons, though. The biggest question is about so-called extraordinary renditions, or transfers, in which terror suspects captured abroad are sent by the United States to their home countries or to third countries, some of which have records of torturing prisoners.

The operations are by nature secret, so it has been hard to separate facts from the speculative murk around them. But the questions are fueled by some concrete evidence: hundreds of recorded flights by C.I.A. planes and at least one kidnapping, the one in Italy, documented in detail by prosecutors.

The questions seem likely to dominate the visit to Europe next week of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. They will focus on just how active America has been in the capture and transfer of terror suspects on European soil.

Adding to the chorus of such requests from other European nations, the British foreign minister, Jack Straw, sent a letter to Ms. Rice on Monday asking for clarification. Mr. Straw, writing on behalf of the European Union, asked specifically about accusations about covert prisons in Eastern Europe and news media reports of C.I.A. airplanes stopping in European bases.

The State Department said Monday that it would cooperate with such requests, adding that it had acted within international law.

The issue is steeped with emotion, given the high level of anger in Europe at reports that American interrogators have tortured prisoners in Iraq; Guant?mo Bay, Cuba, and other places. The stakes are high for many European governments, facing impassioned questions from opposition politicians and human rights groups about just how much they knew about American actions.

''We need full disclosure by our government,'' Sir Menzies Campbell, foreign affairs spokesman for the Liberal Democrats in Britain, told BBC radio on Wednesday. ''If, in fact, people are being moved from a jurisdiction where torture is illegal to a jurisdiction where torture is permissible, that seems to me to be wholly contrary to international law.''

''If we are allowing facilities for aircraft carrying out these actions,'' he added, ''we are at the very least facilitating, and we may even be complicit in it.''

A report on Nov. 2 in The Washington Post about a covert prison system did not identify the European countries, but Human Rights Watch has said such facilities were in Poland and Romania.

Poland and Romania have strongly denied the accusations, and American officials have declined comment.

On the issue of extraordinary renditions, more than 100 prisoners are suspected of being transferred in this way since September 2001. The case with the highest profile occurred here in Italy. On Feb. 17, 2003, an Islamic militant, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, disappeared in Milan and appeared later in Egypt, where he said he had been tortured.

In the only case to have gone up the legal system, Italian prosecutors have charged 22 American operatives with the kidnapping. While the Italian government has denied any knowledge of the operation, it has also declined so far to ask the United States to extradite the suspects -- raising much suspicion here that the government either knew about the operation or approved it.

''I don't see why they shouldn't have agreed with our secret services on an action like that,'' said Giuseppe Cucchi, a former three-star general, military representative to NATO and adviser to the center-left opposition here. ''The condition often put on an action like that is that, 'If something comes out, we will declare that we didn't know anything.' ''

Around Europe there have been varying media reports of C.I.A. planes making European stops.